You saved me the cost of an electrician. I searched through a bunch of videos until coming across this one. The ballast and wiring was nearly identical to the four I had to replace. Thanks!
What a fabulous video! The ballasts stopped working on my garage fixtures so I went to Home Depot to purchase new ones. I wish I had seen this video prior because it's so simple to "bypass the old ballast", re-wire & install new LED bulbs in the existing fixtures! Instead, I purchased new LED fixtures, had to take down the "perfectly fine ones" and install the brand new ones. It would have saved me several steps and the cost would have been much less to get the same result. Thank you, I'll go with your way on the next set!
THE BEST ONE!!! I watched several others and this is by far the most professional. Example - Watched other demonstrator snip the ballast wires "close" thereby making it extremely difficult to re-use (I shouted WHY when he did it). This guy didn't and mentioned it. Every question I had was answered. Great job!!!
Thank you sir, had a client of mine throw out a HEAP of LED tubes and cases, wanted me to take them off-prem and organise a scappy for the metal. I sat looking at them thinking surely they still work, but I am used to fluro with the starter/ballast. With your instructions I was able to confirm they are wired correctly, and throw the lights together for testing, they work! now I can upgrade my garage and home-office lights to LED with confidence. Cheers!
This video helped me get my light rewired for a Lithonia Lighting 1233 RE 2-Light T8 Fluorescent Residential Shop Light that is found on Amazon. The LED light I used was Kihung T8 LED Light Tube 4ft 22W. Not all lights are wired the same, but the light fixture I have worked perfectly after following this video's directions and I am no electrician.
Hey! I haven't plugged mine in yet BUT, this was the best DIY video and I went through DOZENS!!! Thank you SO much for posting this! Looking at diagrams and other videos just made it feel so overwhelming! Yours was laid out beautifully and just super simple! I didn't have the exact same wiring set up as yours but I love how you started by showing what wire was what because that was the main thing catching me up! SUPER helpful and after all the stressing over other videos, I just was shocked on how easy this was! Once again, thank you so much!
This was the best video on this subject that I have seen. I wish you would do more videos like this with electrical issues. You laid this out so simply and explained it great.
I just bought 25 double ended LED lights for my garage so this video was perfect for my application. The procedure will not work for single ended LED tubes.
this is the best explanation i have seen. i think you have helped people that may be intimidated by taking on this project. i like that you did not use a technical terms so we can all understand. thanks for taking the time to post this video.
Most direct drive LED retrofit lamps are single end feed using non-shunted tombstone lamp holders. The ones that you have shown here are double end feed, which is quite unusual. Or you can use smart drive LED retrofit lamps which run off the existing T8 ballast. All of which are double end feed.
Nice video. Very straight forward and very detailed. I have some LED lights from Hyperikon that are Ballast compatible... just not my ballast. So I wanted to bypass. I have an idea but this video confirmed everything. Should be really simple to do. Thank you!
Dude: DONE! I have a plastic-metal version with a couple of electric plug on it, plus a switch. All done in 15 minutes (just because I've plug wrong the wire on the switch :P ) Thanks ;) and yes: is so easy.
i believe it depends on if you bought the single ended or double ended led bulbs. THIS video above is for installation with double ended bulbs. hot goes to one side, neutral goes to the other side. for single ended both hot and neutral are wired to one side of the bulb. the tombstone on the other end is just to help hold the bulb in place. unfortunately he didnt explain that in the video
Very helpful, i thought this type you hook one end, the breaker tripped, then after seeing this made the correct way like the one mentioned here and all good now
Hi Rohit, I wrote this up for a friend who was retrofitting his light boxes for LED's. It describes the steps I took to retrofit my fixtures. It really shouldn't matter how many bulbs are in the socket. Just do as I say, bundle all the neutral (usually white) wires together, bundle all the hot (usually black, but not always) wires together. Do the same for all the ground wires. Here is the full set of instructions: Wiring: a. The bulbs I bought were the 2-sided variety for my 2-sided fixtures. That is, the neutral wires go to the tombstone on one end of the fixture and the hot wires go to the tombstone at the other end of the fixture (in my case, 4 feet away). The wiring for 1 sided fixtures is significantly different, so BEWARE! b. I did not remove any of the wires inserted into the tombstones from the original installation. They can be removed by various methods, but I felt that would only be inviting potential problems (breakage) of the tombstones. All of the original wires emerging from the tombstones can be connected to the new wiring by twist caps. c. It is same to assume that most LED bulbs can not be used with original magnetic ballasts still in the circuit (my retrofit situation). Some LED bulbs can be used with electronic ballasts. My suggestion. Just don't use the original ballast. I cut the wires from the original magnetic ballasts leaving about 5 inches of wire. I don't plan on ever reusing those nasty magnetic ballasts, but if I have to I wanted enough wire available to reconnect them. I removed the ballasts from the receptical to satisfy my need for a clean and tidy retrofit. :-) d. The following describes the wiring strategy I employed. Before cutting and disconnecting any wires I took a good hard look at the wiring "mess" inside the receptical. The neutral/white Romex cable wire eventually made its way to the left tombstone in my receptical. So the left tomestone was neutral. The hot/black Romex cable wire eventually made its way to the right tombstone in my receptical. So the right tomestone was hot. There were other wires connected to the right and left tombstones. After removing the ballast, I took ALL the wires connected to the left tombstone and connected them via a twist cap to the white neutral wire. One nice tidy bundle of connected wires. I took ALL the wires connected to the right tombstone and connected them via a twist cap to the black hot wire. A second nice tidy bundle of connected wires. I left the bare copper ground wire connected to the metal receptal box. I put the cover back on the receptical. Connected the buld. Success! (BTW, when using twist caps it is code in some areas, and just good practice, to twist the cap until you have a pigtail of twisted wires that extends about 2 inches outside the cap. This helps to prevent the wires from ever becoming disconnected inside the twist cap. You can wrap electrical tape around this pig tail of wires just in case you accidentally stripped too much insulation at the end of the wires leaving exposed wires outside the twist cap. But if you strip off the right amount of wire and generate that 2 inches of pig tail electrical tape is really not necessary.
Excellent of this video you made ,complete step by step , without any confiugen for those ,which had no idea how to do it (first time persons) ,hope you make more videos about house applications . again Thanks for your time and instructions
Do all LED tubes work by bypassing the ballast? I read that some LED fixtures also come with electronic ballast and work in a similar way to flouresent bulbs.
great vid thanks I am guessing the tombstones or holders whatever you call them are shunted. I am thinking of changing mine I have about 160 of them. I opened one of them and each end is shorted. please help. regards
Good video, but one little thing. I do not KNOW how the tombstones on the red side are connected. I suppose a red side jumper is implied at around 6:26. Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think it is clearly stated that the two tombstones on the red wire side are in anyway connected. I almost ignored this because I thought I saw a black wire and a red wire going to the left side, but the black turned out to be a shadow.
Good video, but one little thing. At 7:20 it looks like red, white, green, black and blue are all wired together. For those who are just scrolling to jump to the final connections, I don't think that you should wire all those together. Is that right?
I actually did a bit or research. It all depends on weather they are dual end or single end powered tubes. I'm going to post a video on my channel in the coming weeks, expanding on this as well as showing my installation. May be helpful to people that may still have questions.
What do you guys mean? What's the difference between dual and single end? The video spoke about a lot of things, are you referring to the ballast or which ends you connect it to (hot / neutral) or?
LED tubes come in 2 kinds: double end powered or single end powered. This video is showing how to basically remove the ballast from the old fluorescent system (double end powered, meaning both ends are powered) and swapping it out with double ended LEDs. If he was using single end, powered LEDs, then he would actually just need to wire one end only. The other end can have all the wires removed; that end only serves as a holder for the tube so it doesnt fall out. If you are doing single end, it's even simpler. You connect the black wire (live) to one of the blue wires, and the white (neutral) to the other blue wire. Usually they are not color coded the way he uses. Also, in his red wire end, it only has one wire, because he combined them on the other end. In a dual end powered one, as in this video, you can connect the white or black wire to either end. Meaning, you can connect the black to one or the other, and the white to the opposite. Just dont connect the black and white to the SAME end. Although this video is good, you may want to watch another to see how the wires work. I liked 2jeffs1 personally. He goes into more detail for the beginners.
Can you send me a link to your website to look at pricing? I have 6 4' 2 bulb fluorescent lights in my garage its 30'x30' and before I get more of the same I want to look at LED. Thanks
I read somewhere that you had to replace tge tombstones with non shunted ones. Your video says leave them alone. I plan on using the Hyperikon bulbs from Amazon. 4 bulb fixture... can I leave the tombstones or change them ?
+TechGuru4U , my understanding is that for any retrofit where the lamp has metal pins on one end that fit into a tombstone plug, the tombstone needs to be non-shunted to avoid a short that will ruin the bulb. One of the Feit bulbs uses a different system where the tombstones only support the lamp and none of them provide power.
This is for double ended LED tubes. I am wondering, if you get a tube without knowing if it is double ended or single ended, would it cause any damage to the tube if you wire it as double ended but the tube is actually single ended.
Almost certainly yes. Whether it would be the bulb coming on and going out, never to turn on again, or actual fireworks could only be guessed at--Best case scenario is it lights up dimly and flickers, or doesn't light up at all without anything more crazy happening, but ALWAYS know what kind of tube it is and what the fixture needs before putting it in there.
There are two types of leds connects bypass and one side depending on what tombstones come with your bulbs mine were line and neutral so I only had to make one side live black to line and white to neutral as some people mention in video it doesn’t make a difference and it’s true
I dont get it? I watched other videos and they worked it totally different. They had 2 connectors wired together at one end and absolutely no wires hooked up at the other end. Also, is the end tombstone with the red wire wired to the other tombstone beside it?
The black wire is Load, and the white wire is Neutral. It will work either way in this case, but there are situations where it is VERY important to know the difference. In the video, you connected the Neutral(white) to the red wire and indicated that it was "hot"(Load), and connected the Load(black) to the blue wire and indicated that it was "neutral".
*Help* Great video but I've wired mine exactly to the spec you have. Problem is i turn the breaker on and like a florescent bulb they barely function at all without a ballast. Any advice??
hi, i just open my fixture and there is two ballast inside,i connected all the blue and red wire together going to the black and my yellows going to the white then put the bulb but nothing work,what i am doing wrong.thanks
David Ko What? Did you actually watch the video? He clearly explains in the video that you HAVE To bypass the ballast or your LED lights will flicker, as they have their own on-board drivers. Please watch video before asking questions like this.
Will Davis if you read my question carefully you'll notice that I asked if I need to bypass for the Phillips Instant Start LED because I've been told that some LED's require a ballast and some don't.
Yeah they say on the box. I remove the ones that work with/without a ballast to save electricity and plus eventually that ballast will leak one day anyway. its like a battery.
OBServe Garage do you know led has internal ballast right? Ballasts serve a purpose by regulating how much voltage the bulb gets. Flaurecent bulbs are ignited by gas inside the tube. If you put out the full 120v you would blow the bulb every time. The become more useful with the higher wattage bulbs.
OK.....so u said the LED that ur using u said one end is hot and the other end is neutral so when u put the led in was there a mark on the end that was hot? could u put the led in either way?
